Building BUZZ with Your Facebook Page Have you wondered how your competitor got twice as many fans as you have? Have you seen a Facebook page and wished your page looked that good? Do you wish you could get more people to comment on your updates? Have you wanted a better profile image ins
Now when you use bit.ly to shorten your url's you get the QR code also!! Pretty awesome!!
Amplify’d from bit.ly
Entrepreneurs are eternal optimists. But you don't need an academic study to tell you that!
Amplify’d from www.inc.com
How Great Entrepreneurs Think
Think inside the (restless, curious, eager) minds of highly accomplished company builders.
What distinguishes great entrepreneurs? Discussions of entrepreneurial psychology typically focus on creativity, tolerance for risk, and the desire for achievement—enviable traits that, unfortunately, are not very teachable. So Saras Sarasvathy, a professor at the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business, set out to determine how expert entrepreneurs think, with the goal of transferring that knowledge to aspiring founders. While still a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon, Sarasvathy—with the guidance of her thesis supervisor, the Nobel laureate Herbert Simon—embarked on an audacious project: to eavesdrop on the thinking of the country's most successful entrepreneurs as they grappled with business problems. She required that her subjects have at least 15 years of entrepreneurial experience, have started multiple companies—both successes and failures—and have taken at least one company public.
Sarasvathy identified 245 U.S. entrepreneurs who met her criteria, and 45 of them agreed to participate. (Responses from 27 appeared in her conclusions; the rest were reserved for subsequent studies. Thirty more helped shape the questionnaire.) Revenue at the subjects' companies—all run by the founders at that time—ranged from $200 million to $6.5 billion, in industries as diverse as toys and railroads. Sarasvathy met personally with all of her subjects, including such luminaries as Dennis Bakke, founder of energy giant AES; Earl Bakken of Medtronic; and T.J. Rodgers of Cypress Semiconductor. She presented each with a case study about a hypothetical start-up and 10 decisions that the founder of such a company would have to make in building the venture. Then she switched on a tape recorder and let the entrepreneur talk through the problems for two hours. Sarasvathy later collaborated with Stuart Read, of the IMD business school in Switzerland, to conduct the same experiment with professional managers at large corporations—the likes of Nestlé, Philip Morris, and Shell. Sarasvathy and her colleagues are now extending their research to novice entrepreneurs and both novice and experienced professional investors.
Sarasvathy concluded that master entrepreneurs rely on what she calls effectual reasoning. Brilliant improvisers, the entrepreneurs don't start out with concrete goals. Instead, they constantly assess how to use their personal strengths and whatever resources they have at hand to develop goals on the fly, while creatively reacting to contingencies. By contrast, corporate executives—those in the study group were also enormously successful in their chosen field—use causal reasoning. They set a goal and diligently seek the best ways to achieve it. Early indications suggest the rookie company founders are spread all across the effectual-to-causal scale. But those who grew up around family businesses will more likely swing effectual, while those with M.B.A.'s display a causal bent. Not surprisingly, angels and seasoned VCs think much more like expert entrepreneurs than do novice investors.
Effective use of "Brand Ambassadors" creating social buzz... Has Old Spice given up control of their brand?
Amplify’d from www.corporate-eye.com
Old Spice Continues to Entertain and Drive Social Media Buzz
The Old Spice Guy commercials have been very successful in making an old brand that many people associated with their grandfathers into a brand that younger generations are actually pausing to consider. Both male and female audiences are talking about the Old Spice Guy commercials with the newest commercial (and my favorite so far) getting 3.4 million views on YouTube in the first week that it was released. You can view it below.
One of the things that keeps the Old Spice Guy commercials alive is the company’s willingness to give up control of their content. When an Old Spice Guy commercial is uploaded to YouTube, people use clips to create their own videos. They talk about the commercials, share them, and make them their own. That’s a brand manager’s dream come true. However, giving up control of a brand isn’t something that most large companies are willing to do yet. The Old Spice success is a perfect example of how the power of the social web can drive brand buzz, but unless a company is willing to lose control to a certain extent, that buzz potential is very limited.
Be sure to check out the original article on Mashable to see some great graphics of stats.
Amplify’d from mashable.com
More than 90% of consumers unsubscribe, “unlike” or stop following brands because of too frequent, irrelevant or boring communications, according to a report by social media and e-mail marketing services company ExactTarget.
Released Tuesday, “The Social Break-Up” is a study that surveyed more than 1,500 consumers, exploring changing online behaviors and top motivations for “unliking,” unfollowing and unsubscribing from brand communications via Facebook, Twitter and e-mail.
Here are a few key findings from the study:
- 91% of consumers have unsubscribed from opt-in marketing e-mails.
- 77% of consumers report being more cautious about providing their e-mail address to companies versus last year.
- 81% of consumers have either “unliked” or removed a company’s posts from their Facebook News Feed.
- 71% of consumers report being more selective about “liking” a company on Facebook than they were last year.
- 51% of consumers expect that a “like” will result in marketing communications from brands, while 40% do not believe it should result in marketing communications.
- 41% of consumers have “unfollowed” a company on Twitter.
Amplify’d from www.marketingcharts.com
Facebook represents the largest share of time spent by US internet users of the top five most-visited websites, according to a new white paper from comScore. “The 2010 US Digital Year in Review” indicates that Facebook increased its share of total US internet time 71% between December 2009 (7.2%) and December 2010 (12.3%).
Facebook is the only one of the top five US internet sites by audience to significantly increase its share of total US internet time between December 2009 and December 2010. Microsoft remained roughly flat at around 6%, while AOL slightly dropped from a little more than 4% to a little less than 4%.
While US internet users continue to spend the largest percentage of their online time visiting portals, social networking is steadily growing as portals start to slip. Between December 2009 and December 2010, portals lost about 6% of their online time share, dropping from 21.6% to 20.4%. During the same time period, social networks increased their online time share by 36%, rising from 10.6% to 14.4%.
As communication platforms and devices continue to proliferate, the usage of web-based email has begun to decline, particularly among younger consumers who are increasingly shifting toward instant messaging, social media, and mobile communications. Total web-based email usage declined 8% in the past year, with the most precipitous decline occurring among 12-17-year-olds (down 59%).
While web-based email has witnessed a general decline during the past year, other recent comScore analysis indicates email usage via mobile devices has experienced significant growth, driven largely by increased smartphone adoption. In November 2010, 70.1 million mobile users (30% of all mobile subscribers) accessed email on their mobile devices, an increase of 36% from the previous year. Daily usage of email showed an even greater increase, growing 40% as 43.5 million users turned to their mobile devices for email.
The fact is the consumer is in control of the brand hype. The brand that does the best job engaging the audience will be the winner.
Amplify’d from www.sq1agency.com
What top 5 advertisers created the most Social Media Buzz before, during and after the Superbowl?
With spots costing $3 million for 30-seconds, advertisers are rushing into Social Media to create buzz. How many times have you seen an ad and not recalled the product being advertised? Right? It happens all the time.
Well, the savvy marketers are using social media to reinforce their brand and their spot over social media channels – before, during and after the game.
- VW Star Wars / Darth Vader went viral with 12 million + You Tube views 2 days before the spot aired.
- Volkswagen debuted take-over ads on YouTube the day after the Super Bowl — when people are watching their favorite commercials again.
- Bud Light has challenged consumers to guess the storylines of its three Super Bowl commercials from photos posted to its Facebook page resulting in over 1 Million Facebook Fans!
•79.8% of all Volkswagen mentions have occurred since February 3, 2011
Of the Top 5 brand mentions, Groupon was despised. Using Radian6 we analyzed A Conversation Cloud for Groupon shows the most popular words posted about the spots.
All of this data points to the fact that consumers are in fact, in control of brand hype and marketers have to accept the fact that social media is here to stay, and they need to engage their audience where the audience spends their time.
Marketers must listen, anticipate and communicate. Social Media provides a great tool to get real-time insight into your consumer. A few years ago that type of insight was available only by spending a ton of cash on research. Now, that insight is available – but you must know how to find it, understand it and embrace it.
If NOT they should be!! How are you planing to use them in your strategy?
Amplify’d from socialmediatoday.com
Are These Social Media Trends of 2011 Part of Your Strategy?
“We don’t have a choice on whether we do social media, the question is how well we do it.”– Erik Qualman.
1. Online video. Everywhere.
2. Mobile Marketing.
3. Location.
4. Deal Hunting
The social media trends that arise are unlimited and we as people influence their success and failures. So while everyone is waiting for Twitter to monetize, Google to fail with another platform, or for an explanation of what augmented reality really does – we need to ask ourselves what enables our success, jeopardizes our performance and how we want to shape the years to come.
Google has yet another tool out that I knew nothing about. Thanks to @ProBlogger for sharing the info on Google Reading Level. Test your blog and see if you are reaching the Genius Levels or the Average Joes!
Amplify’d from www.problogger.net
Use Google Reading Level to Improve Your Blog Message
Last month, Google launched its new Google Reading Level feature. What this does is algorithmically work out the reading level of the search results, to help users more easily decide which search results to click on.
How is it worked out?
Like everything with Google, I’m not entirely sure how Reading Level is calculated. I do know that teachers were paid to grade web pages, and an algorithm was worked out using that data.
Using more technical phrases, longer sentence structure, and creative writing techniques such as hyperbole may cause your writing to be ranked as more “Advanced.”
How can you access Google’s Reading Level for your blog?
To view your blog’s reading level, go to Google’s Advanced Search (the hyperlink is located next to the search box on Google’s home page). Type your search query in the first form box—the one annotated with “all these words”—and make sure that the Reading Level drop-down box shows “annotate results with reading levels”. You should see the results for my old blog’s home page below:
Ultimately, though, your readers are you best source of feedback. If you are constantly having to explain terms in post comments or over email, you should tone down the complexity of your writing, which will lower your Reading Level ranking. If, however, your readers respond with intelligent comments, you may be able to write in a more advanced style. Just ensure that not too many people are left scratching their heads when they visit your blog.
Here are the Nominees for the best commercial in 2010. Which one is your favorite? Which one creates the best BUZZ? Which one do you think will win?
